


Her Heart & Her Soul

by Frumpologist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Break Up, Depression, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Harry/Hermione past, Mental Health Issues, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-20
Updated: 2018-10-20
Packaged: 2019-08-04 22:55:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16355840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frumpologist/pseuds/Frumpologist
Summary: The war was hard, but this fallout is harder.





	Her Heart & Her Soul

**Author's Note:**

> This Drabble was written for Hermione’s Haven Roll-a-Drabble October 2018. I was given George/Break Up.

She is suffocating. There’s something living in the pit of her stomach, like a beast that roars and shakes her nerves. It’s heavy and it’s exhausting. She wonders if there’s room for both of them or if she’ll lose herself to make room for this foreign feeling. It certainly feels like she’ll fade away under the blustery force of it. Like any beast, the feeling roots to her foundation and oppresses her like a predator might do to its vulnerable prey. 

Harry tries so hard to fix her. His hands caress her back and he whispers affirmations in her ear as she cries. In those low moments, when she feels like it’s too overwhelming and she’ll just implode with the weight of it all, he’s there and he’s close and he’s the only thing that keeps her grounded to life. 

The war was hard, but this fallout is harder. She’s lost so much. Her innocence, her optimism, they’ve fled from her like sun from the moon. Harry doesn’t know what to do for her, he’s told her several times. And she knows it’s not because he doesn’t want to, but he’s not sure how to pull her from this darkness when he’s wading so deeply in his own. 

For a while, it was enough. They'd fuck and ignore every thought they could otherwise share. He’s good at that, taking control and forcing her to forget how rotten life has become. But while she’s drowning in this overwhelming sea of despair, she hopes it will pass. Harry wants to wallow, wants to feel it, but she knows that if she allows herself, she’ll never come back from it. He’s not enough anymore and she ends it, just like she ends everything when it disappoints her. 

Of course she’d end up here at Weasley’s Wizarding Wheezes, like she used to before she spiraled downwards. George is in the shop when she bustles in. Her throat is clenched around a dry lump and it’s almost like her chest is constricted by the weight of a hippogriff. She’s desperate and she needs something, anything, that will make her smile. And of course he’d be here, sitting behind the counter in his most ridiculous powder blue suit, and he’s playing with a Pygmy puff when she says hello. 

“Granger,” he greets her, and the smile on his face lifts only enough to prove it’s a smile. “Didn’t think you even lived in England anymore.”

The beast inside her paces and watches while he pretends. The beast recognizes his mask, it’s like a mirror of her own. She steps forward and his eyes, dull and disengaged as they were when she first step foot in the shop, widen and brighten and the beast inside her shrinks. 

That’s it, she thinks, that hope she’s looking for, right here in front of her and so, so very fragile that she’s worried about scaring it away. 

“I couldn’t leave,” she tells him honestly. “I tried, but everything we fought for is here.”

That’s how she first found George after the war. But George came back from his grief, and he loved her, and he wanted her to be better. He’s alive, he told her, but she knows he’s halved and broken and alone, too. He’s trying. He’s fueled by hope. He thinks one day he’ll be better and he’s building his life up from its rotten foundation. A tether to this world so that he never forgets what happened but can move on and be who Fred would have wanted. 

George nods. The Pygmy puff is moved to its habitat and then he rounds on her. He’s tall and lean and sharper than she remembers from the man she’d left behind so many months ago. 

“More Daydream Draught?” He’s so close and he towers over her and doesn’t allow her space. 

She lifts her chin. “I need something stronger this time, George.”

“It’s the closest to hope I can get without euphoria,” he explains as his hand finds her waist and his fingers ghost up her side. “We already know that euphoria’s side effects are danger-”

“I’m sorry, George,” she whispers to him and she can’t move. The scared beast is roaring in her ears and she’s quaking with nerves. Every thought tells her to run, self-preserve, survive. “I’m sorry I left you after that night.”

His fingers are rediscovering her dips and curves until they wind along a small curl of hair and his eyes dart between hers. “You’re all I had left.”

Her heart seizes and she gasps a horrible sound that fills the silence between them. “George, I-”

“Before you lie to me, love,” he says as he flicks the curls of hair behind her ear, “I understand. I know you. I know what we were, and I know what you didn’t want us to be.”

She releases a breath and her coiled muscles begin to loosen. “I was wrong.”

She says it even though he doesn’t want her to and his response is immediate. His lips crash onto hers and he backs her up against the counter. She jumps up and pulls him between her legs and wraps her arms around his neck. 

He’s everything. He’s the air she needs and the peace she craves. How did she leave this before? How could she forget just how liberating his lips are? How disentangled from pain she is when his hands are running lengths along her back, her sides, her hips? George is the only person who quiets her dangerous beast, who tames it and staves off its suffocating pressure. 

He’s her heart and her soul. 


End file.
